Columbia Road Market 14
As I came round the corner into Columbia Rd early this morning, my heart leapt to see the first Christmas trees of the season on sale in the market. I walked up and down, savouring the fragrance of pine in the empty market beneath a sky heavy with rain. Then one of the stallholders yelled “Here we go!” and the sleet came down heavily upon us. The half-dozen other hardy customers and I huddled with some of the traders under a huge green and white stripe umbrella, gaping at the torrent.
Once it eased off, I bought myself a stripy Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) for £3.50 and ran home to make porridge. Although I am uncertain about the aesthetics of these strangely artificial plants with their enormous single flowers, like gramophone horns on sticks, I always buy one each year because I am inspired by their phenomenal will to life. Below you can see the red monster I had last year.
For the rest of today, weather permitting, I shall be out on Brick Lane giving away free copies of the first Spitalfields Life print digest edition. If you want to pick one up, copies can be collected from Sandra at the Golden Heart on Commercial St, or Labour & Wait, Shelf and The Carpenters’ Arms on Cheshire St, or Ryantown on Columbia Rd, or The Book Art Bookshop on Pitfield St.
Ashley Jordan Gordon, photographer
The gaze of this girl on Kingsland Rd is inescapable, she is the still point at the centre of Ashley Jordan Gordon‘s unforgettable photograph. With the deep perspective of Shoreditch High St to her left and the momentum of the crowd to her right, she stands poised in her own turning world, ready for whatever adventure the night will bring.
It is a measure of this remarkable picture that it draws you right in to a drama of infinite possibility. Gordon admits, “I thrive on catching action and atmosphere as they converge in a narrative moment. It is the convergence between myself, the subject and the camera – how we got there and what happened once we met – that is exciting. It is an act of life happening…”
Since I featured the photographs of John Gay and Paul Trevor, I have been looking at recent photography that captures the life of the neighbourhood but found little that was distinctive until, to my delight, I came across “Girl on Kingsland Rd” by Ashley Jordan Gordon, currently featured in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery until 14th February. If you click on her name at the top of this article you can go to Gordon’s website, explore her portfolio of concert photography and read the blog recording her daily life here in words and pictures. Remarkably, all the images on display share the same vibrant clarity of form.
Clubbing has become a major part of the culture of this place and “Girl on Kingsland Rd” manages to capture this entire phenomenon in a single iconic image. All the hopes and dreams, grace, chaos and trashiness are here in this pictorial microcosm. Gordon likes the photographic masters of the last century like Walker Evans, Eugene Atget and Henri Cartier Bresson but to me her expansive panoramic composition recalls nineteenth century narrative painters like William Powell Frith, Theodore Gericault and John Everett Millais.
Unlike the photographers I previously featured, Gordon is a dynamic colourist. Observe the strategic use of red in the photo above and of yellow in the picture below. In each case the colour is part of the meaning of these pictures and it connects the subjects with their environment. But it is the people we see, and it is portraiture that is Ashley Jordan Gordon’s passion, “No matter what other kinds of photographs draw me in, I always come back to loving portraits of people. I love watching and meeting people, and taking the time to take a really good look at someone,” she says.
Let me admit, I walked past that line of clubbers on Kingsland Rd a hundred times and never gave it a second look, until now. Similarly, this delicate subtle portrait of a “Guy with Bike on Brick Lane” is a familiar subject that you might pass by in Spitalfields any Sunday, but through Gordon’s eyes you see it for the first time.
Photographs copyright © Ashley Jordan Gordon
Artists' canteen at the Rochelle School
Through this door in Arnold Circus, you will find the Rochelle Canteen situated in the former bicycle shed of the Rochelle School, now run by James Moores’ A Foundation as a complex of artists’ studios and gallery. The shed has had a coat of white paint, a steel kitchen has been installed in one end and white dining tables placed at the other. Beyond the word “canteen” on one of the buzzers at the gate, there is no indication out on the street that the Rochelle Canteen exists. But this did not stop Evening Standard food critic Fay Maschler picking chefs Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold’s canteen as one of her top new restaurants when they opened. I was taken there recently for a birthday lunch, the two of us shared an impressive large black bream cooked to perfection and served with new potatoes and fennel, all for £20. Even after a couple of years, this undercover canteen remains Shoreditch’s best kept secret.
I sneaked round there one morning last week to meet Melanie and Margot and they explained how they ran a catering business from Margot’s flat in Covent Garden before James Moores invited them to open the canteen at the Rochelle School. The idea was not just to cook food for the artists who have studios there but to create a space where people from the neighbourhood could eat too, connecting the school to the surrounding area. It certainly is a fascinating clientele that turns up for lunch. Last time I was there, I was intrigued by a man at the next table examining contact sheets of Wes Andersen with the animated figures from “Fantastic Mr Fox,” the next time I saw these one of these beautiful pictures by Tim Walker was when my copy of The New Yorker flip-flopped through the letterbox a month later.
Interviewing Margot and Melanie is like being the supply teacher sized up by the flirtatiously giggly top girls from St Trinians. Maybe it is the influence of the schoolyard environment? There is no doubt they are a pair of professionals at the top of their game, two serious and stylish women – Margot in an elegant print dress and Melanie with an impressive pair of heels. Sitting at table with them, you quickly appreciate an interesting dynamic that reveals a genuine feeling for the creation of wonderful food, leavened by a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude.
While Melanie is trying to persuade me to have toast and marmite, Margot blushes as she searches like a poet for satisfactory language to describe their approach – because all the vocabulary she might have used (including adjectives like “seasonal” and “regional”) has been co-opted by our more venial supermarkets. “Simple food prepared with respect and love” she ventures and then, as she returns striding proudly across the restaurant with today’s menu, adds “gentle food that lifts you up.” She points out Venison & Carrots, “This is the dish of the season” she says with authority. “There’s no fuss here”, confirms Melanie with a smile, raising an eyebrow seductively as she draws my attention to Rice Pudding & Prunes, the perfect comforting autumn dessert. Now I am beginning to feel hungry. “Don’t forget to tell everyone we open for breakfast from 9 o’clock” adds Melanie, as we venture outside to take the picture below.
Wickhams’ Lopsided Department Store
Observe how the gap-toothed smile of this building undermines the pompous ambition of its classical design. Without this gaping flaw, it would be just another example of debased classicism but, thanks to the hole in the middle, it transcends its own thwarted architectural ambitions, by default, to become a work of unintentional genius.
Built in 1927, but closed now for many years, Wickhams Department Store in the Mile End Rd was meant to be the “Harrods of East London”. The hubris of its developers in the early years of the twentieth century was such that they simply assumed the small shopkeepers in this terrace would all fall into line and agree to move out, so the masterplan to build the new department store could proceed. But they met their match in the Spiegelhalters at 81 Mile End Rd, the shop you see sandwiched in the middle. The first Mr Spiegelhalter had set up his jewellery business in Whitechapel in 1828 when he emigrated from Germany, and his descendants moved to 81 Mile End Rd in 1880, where the business was run by three Spiegelhalter brother who had been born on the premises. These brothers refused all the developers’ inducements to sell.
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the office of those developers because there must have been words – before they came to the painful compromise decision to go ahead and build around the Spiegelhalters. Maybe they comforted themselves with the belief that eventually the gap could be closed and their ambitions fully realised at some later date? If so, it was a short-lived consolation because the position of the Spiegelhalters’ property was such that the central tower of Wickhams Department Store had to be contructed off-centre with seven window bays on the left and nine on the right, rather than nine on either side. This must have been the final crushing humiliation for the developers – how the Spiegelhalter brothers must have laughed.
The presence of the word “halter” within the name Spiegelhalter cannot have escaped the notice of bystanders, “Spiegel-halter by name, halter by nature!” they surely observed. Those stubborn Spiegelhalters had the last laugh too, because the lopsided department store which opened in 1927, closed in the nineteen sixties, while the Spiegelhalters waited until 1988 to sell out, over a century after they opened. I think they made their point.
As part of a new plan to develop this huge empty building as offices, a recent planning application contains the following text,“the attractiveness and uniformity of 69-89 Mile End Rd is only marred by 81 Mile End Rd which is inferior in terms of appearance, detailing and architecture.” These people obviously have no sense of humour. They propose to demolish 81 and replace it with a glass atrium to provide access to the offices. Where are the Spiegelhalters now we need them?
As self-evident testimony to the story of its own construction, the current building stands simultaneously as a towering monument both to the relentless ambition that needs to be forever modernising, and also to the contrary stick-in-the-mud instinct that sees no point in any change. Willpower turned back on itself created this unique edifice. The paradoxical architecture of Wickhams Department Store inadvertently achieves what many architects dream of – because in its very form and structure, it expresses something profound about the contradictory nature of what it means to be human.
Itchy, the Spitalfields pig
May I introduce you to one of Spitalfields’ most popular residents, Itchy, the black and white sow at the City Farm in Buxton St? Itchy is an official registered Kune-Kune pig, hailing from New Zealand where in the nineteen seventies her breed came close to extinction. She is proudly descended from just eighteen hardy survivors. The name Kune-Kune means “fat and round” in Maori, and is Polynesian for “plump” too, hinting at the breed’s earliest origins.
Itchy had weight issues on account of all the delicious scraps brought to her by the adoring residents of Spitalfields. But thanks to Jenny Bettenson, the farmyard co-ordinator, Itchy is now on a strict regime of no snacks between meals and has slimmed down radically over the last three years. No “spanx” are necessary to support and lift Itchy’s nether regions.
Kune-Kune pigs are a relatively small variety but Itchy has exceeded expectations by growing tall, which caused her some painful shoulder problems in the heavy snow of last winter. However, Itchy has a cosy sty to snuggle up in at night and after a month’s bed rest she was as right as rain. The distinguishing characteristic of the Kune-Kune breed are a pair of tassels or “Piri-Piri” which hang from the lower jaw as an evolutionary curiousity and, as you will see, Itchy has a fine pair dangling.
I hope Itchy will forgive me if I reveal her age, which is approaching ten years old, with a birthday coming up on the 4th January 2010. This is a mature age, verging on old for a pig, that may live up to fifteen years. Many readers will remember Itchy’s sister Scratchy who sadly passed away in 2005, but Jenny assures me that Itchy is not lonely on account of her many visitors, especially children, drawn by her gentle nature and endearing traits. You only have to rub Itchy’s belly and she will roll over on her back in playful affection and if you offer a treat, she will sit up and beg eagerly. Since the loss of Scratchy in 2005, Itchy had a new batchelorette pad constructed with a peaceful run under the apple trees at the city farm and she is at home to visitors most days – if you fancy dropping by to say hello, as I always do whenever I am passing.
Given the usual fate of pigs, it is an extraordinary privileged existence that Itchy enjoys, though in her innocence she will never know it.
Everyone in Spitalfields loves the old sow.
The politics of porridge
Each morning when I wake here in Spitalfields, I lie for a few moments contemplating the squirrels gambolling in the yew tree outside my window before climbing from my bed to start another day. Once in the kitchen, without any conscious decision, I set about making porridge. This automatic daily ritual extends from autumn until spring every year and is one of three constant elements in my life that are residuals of my years in the Scottish Highlands where, as well as acquiring the porridge habit, I learnt to drink whisky and I began to write too.
Most people know Samuel Johnson’s definition of oats from his famous Dictionary of the English Language 1755, “A grain which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.” It is often quoted as an example of his famous wit, but if you place it into the context of the slaughter of nearly two thousand Highlanders by the English army at the battle of Culloden in 1746, it entirely loses its charisma. Here in the south, we may consider these events as history but in the north of Scotland their consequences still dominate the lives of those living there today. The Highland Clearances and the introduction of sheep created a devastated deforested depopulated landscape – a place that visitors enjoy for its soulfulness.
I was aware of none of this when I accepted a job in the Highlands at the age of twenty three and set out in a train from Kings Cross. I shall never forget the greeting of some of my work colleagues when I offered my hand, introducing myself, “Oh my God, you’re English!” they exclaimed in horror. But the Scots are a magnanimous people and these same colleagues were proud to introduce me to a local celebrity when he paid a visit. It was the heroic shot put veteran from the Highland Games whose fine portrait adorns every “Scotts Porridge Oats” box, and I was honoured to shake his hand. I knew I had truly arrived when, after several whiskies with a distinguished poet at the Dounreay Nuclear Power Facility Social Club in Caithness, I received an intimate piece of advice.” Never trust the English” he told me,“when you go down south, be polite, and smile and nod when they speak to you but never believe a word they tell you.”
The Highlands are inspiring place where, in spite of everything, the oral culture of generations remains alive, most people still carry a repertoire of traditional songs, and I shall never forget meeting the great bard Sorley MacLean, a seventh generation poet. It was the playwright Norman Malcolm Macdonald who started me writing, asking what stories I had myself. He lived on a croft that his family had acquired outside Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis at the time of the 1886 Crofting Act. Out of all the conversations I had with Norman, I recall him now talking about porridge, how his forefathers filled themselves up with it before going out to fish for herring in small boats. He showed me the porridge drawer (a traditional feature in many Highland homes) where they poured the surplus porridge to cool and slice up to eat like cake.
In those days I ate my porridge neat, but nowadays the Sassenach in me has resurfaced and I enjoy it with a spoonful of honey and a little milk.
Columbia Road Market 13
The rain kept me awake during the night, so I was surprised to wake and find the pavements dried out in time for the market this morning, though that deep puddle under the railway bridge is still there. There were some lovely natural pine wreaths and garlands in the market today, but I averted my eyes because these treats are reserved for closer to Christmas.
Last week, I pruned this fig which grows in a nineteenth century feed bin that I bought for a couple of pounds at the car boot sale in the Exeter Cattle Market years ago. Now the fig just looks like a bare twig stuck in the ground, so today at the market I bought four pots of miniature daffodils (tete a tete) for a fiver, already sprouted, to alleviate the wintriness, and as a small antidote to the sleeting melancholia of late November. Some gardeners might consider this intervention cheating but I if I plant bulbs any other way the squirrels eat them. The stones in the pot are to prevent the foxes digging out the fig as they did last summer. Between the squirrels and the foxes, there is a remarkable amount of wildlife to circumvent for such an urban garden.
